1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a host device for information processing such as a facsimile device or a personal computer and an information processing apparatus having such a host device and other devices that are externally affiliated to the host device.
2. Background Art
With the recent development of an information society, the ways information processing devices are used have increased greatly. However, realizing a single information processing device that is able to cope with all such demands would be expensive. Accordingly, various external devices are connected as necessary to a host device that is provided with basic functions.
If a facsimile is used as an example of a host device, a modem for use with multiple lines, a scanner or a printer or the like are all examples of affiliated external devices.
Each of the host device and the affiliated external devices in such a system as above is provided with a memory that stores a control program. The host device as well as each of the affiliated external devices is operated according to the program that is stored in its own memory. When the control program is to be subject to a "version-up", generally a service person manually replaces the memory provided in each information processing device (that is, each of the host device and the external devices) with a new memory that has stored a new control program of the updated version. Or, if a rewritable flash memory is used as the program memory, the control program data in the flash memory can be replaced with a new version data by transferring the new control program data from a service center through a public telephone network and rewriting the new program into the flash memory.
However, the manual exchange of memory in the host and external devices by a service person is quite troublesome and it is especially the case when a number of external devices are connected to the host device. The latter method of rewriting the flash memory through the public phone network or the like may be less troublesome than the manual exchange, but even this method has a serious shortcoming that transmission errors of the program data may occur and thus reliable rewriting is not always assured.